As you will have seen from this web site, my work these days is primarily as a singing
coach and piano teacher. Although I get great fulfilment from these activities, it has
meant sitting behind the piano in a supporting role, rather than evolving as an
instrumentalist in my own right. Three years ago, I decided to do something about this.
After all, at one time (starting in 1967), I had made my living as a keyboard player which
had, in turn, led me on into song writing and composition.

I can safely say that I am now playing piano better than I ever did. This has been
achieved with the guidance of such gurus as Howard Riley, Nick Weldon and Bill Le
Sage. If ever I feel complacent with my playing, I only have to listen to one of these guys
to realise how far there is still to travel.

I am now happy to accept the occasional piano engagement or session. My strengths are
still in funk, soul and blues but my jazz playing is now coming more to the fore. In fact, I
am always on the lookout for any players in South London that would like to play some
jazz informally and just for fun.

If you're interested, please contact me.

Warning!

Unless you are a keyboard player with some interest in equipment, please read no further.
There is nothing offensive in what follows. On the contrary, it will be duller than
ditchwater!

For a penniless keyboard player in the late 60's, there seemed to be a choice of two
organs: the Farfisa or the Vox Continental. Both were single manual, had drawbars and
sounded absolutely nothing like a Hammond. You always stood up to play them because
it looked cooler and they didn't come with a stool. Had I been given the choice, I suppose
I would have gone for the Farfisa as it sounded more funky. But when I turned up for my
first ever audition with The Hijackers (a name they may not have chosen in this Century),
the Vox Continental, with its reverse black and white keys, awaited me. The organ solo
Telstar by the Tornadoes began playing in my brain and I desperately tried to replace it
with Alan Price's solo in 'House of the Rising Sun' by the Animals. In the end, I gave
them my rendition of Green Onions (standing, of course) and got the job.

The next choice to be made was which electric piano? Would it be the Wurlitzer or the
Fender Rhodes? The 'Wurly' was considered the more 'Rock and Roll' of the two and
was later to be a trademark of Supertramp's sound. It was also hideous to tune. The
Rhodes was more sophisticated and 'Jazzy'. I went for 'Jazzy'. If the likes of Herbie
Hancock and Chick Corea were happy with it, who was I to argue.

It was time to move on to a more up market organ, at least one with two manuals. Yet
again, there was a straight and obvious choice: a Hammond or a Lowrey.

Why did I think twice? All my favourite organ players used a Hammond: Jimmy
McGriff, Jack McDuff (an obscure connection with Scotland?) and of course Jimmy
Smith. But closer to home, in fact in the London clubs, I was closely watching Stevie
Winwood, then in the Spencer Davies group and the man I idolised: Graham Bond.

You may not have heard of him, but the Graham Bond Organisation had a residency at
the 100 club in Oxford Street every Thursday night and I often looked on in awe. Jack
Bruce was on bass, Ginger Baker on drums (both later to form Cream with Eric Clapton)
and John McGlaughlin sometimes played guitar. In the midst of this formidable line up
sat a large figure with greasy hair and a pint of bitter on his Hammond organ. His raspy
voice was perfect for R&B and the organ sound, propelled by Leslie speakers, ripped
your ears apart. The man was an inspiration. I once plucked up the courage to sidle up to
him and ask, "What are your musical influences?". "Nobody", he gruffly replied, and I
slunk back into the crowd. Graham Bond had no real commercial success, became
involved in heroin and black magic and died in tragic circumstances.

Then along came psychedelia and overnight all my favourite bands changed their music
and their stage clothes. A good example was the Zoot Money Big Roll Band. Zoot was
another Hammond organist, singer and general nutter, who thought it a good idea to turn
the band into Dantalion's Chariot. They came on stage wearing caftans and I left the club.
Zoot's (or should I say Dantalion's) guitarist was Andy Summers, who later ditched the
caftan, bleached his hair and joined Police.

Let's rewind and consider my choice of manual organ. Remember, it was to be either the
Hammond or the Lowrey. No contest?

Well, perversely, I chose the much more insipid sounding Lowrey. In my defence,
Garth Hudson of The Band managed to make it sound amazing. I expect, though, that
Garth would have employed several roadies to lug it in and out of vans and up flights of
stairs. All I had was the drummer.

I did eventually come to my senses and swap it for an M100 Hammond organ. I still
made the token effort to be original by using a wah wah pedal fuzz box instead of the
conventional Leslie speaker. I thought I could solve the back breaking aspect of being
an organist by purchasing a split Hammond. This meant that you could unplug the top
half and carry it separately. Unfortunately the bottom half weighed more than two
Lowreys.

I was now being asked to produce string sounds and, as I couldn't afford a synthesiser, I
opted for the Solina String Machine. Not only was it made of wood, but it had buttons
that said violin, cello, trumpet and horn. The Solina sounded absolutely nothing like any
of these instruments, so I wired that up to a fuzz box too, and succeeded in making it
sound like nothing on earth.

And so we come to my next choice: which synthesiser?

In the early 70's, analogue mono synthesisers were the latest 'must' for any
selfrespecting keyboard player. The obvious choice was the Minimoog, as used by
Kraftwork and Rick Wakeman, and still being dragged out by bands such as The Orb and
The Chemical Brothers.

OK, I won't drag this one out. I bought an ARP Odyssey, as used by Abba and Gary
Numan. And, yes, I wired it up to my Solina String machine.

In the late 70's, polyphonic synthesisers were horrendously expensive and were more like
switchboards. This time, I made a great choice. Now this is pretty obscure, but I went for
this wooden box with jack sockets called a Korg PS3200. Korg had obviously run out of
catchy names but I took to my PS3200 immediately. Despite being faced with an array of
oscillators and filters that needed to be 'patched' with jack leads, I was soon producing
whatever sound people required of me. I also had the luxury of16 memory presets to
save my favourites. What is more, it was made of wood.

And then there were digital synthesisers. Actually, there was the one that every keyboard
player would sell their mother for the Yamaha DX7. Apparently it had frequency
modulation. We didn't even need to know what that meant because it sounded wonderful
and couldn't wait to boast to our frequency modulator less colleagues. The sound, in
fact, lived up to the rumours and the DX7, which emerged in 1983, had a clear and
defined quality that was soon being described as 'cold'. Although I missed my
switchboard and jack leads, I was immediately entranced by the magical sounds
emanating from 32 factory presets. The problems began when I tried programming it
myself and before long I was buying more factory presets rather than being creative.
What's more, everyone was using exactly the same presets!

Manufacturers began to realise that it made more sense to start building synth modules,
i.e. boxes we could just link together to one master keyboard. So I started buying boxes,
still do and am not about to list them. They're just boxes.

And then, just when we thought there was nothing new to buy, we were told to ditch our
synthesisers and move over to real sounds. These, apparently, were called samplers. I
have no technical knowledge whatsoever, but these new gadgets could somehow grab an
audio sound and convert it to digital information. Don't ask me. But, somehow or other,
this concert violinist plays a few octaves, the sampler records it, translates it and suddenly
I'm playing great violin on my keyboard.

Well, actually I'm not. The sound he produces depends on his instrument, the bowing
action, the weight with which he plays it, how one note connects with the next actually
I don't know what I'm talking about, but I can tell you that, when I press that key, it's
nothing like a violin. Oh, bring back my Solina string machine with the fuzz box.

And so what do I play now? Well, I have a Kurzweil PC88 master keyboard attached to
all those boxes and I run the whole caboodle into an Apple Mac running Mark of the Unicorn Digital Performer.

And what keyboard do I enjoy playing the most?

A piano.